


How to Freeze Your Ass off in One Easy Step - A Guide by Clint Barton

by Dach



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Barton is a drama queen, Clint Barton-centric, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mission Fic, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 12:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dach/pseuds/Dach
Summary: It was ten degrees fahrenheit and Clint was 98.3% positive that him freezing his ass off in a tree was entirely unnecessary. Hell, winter assassinations were entirely unnecessary. Too bad Coulson wasn’t in the mood to hear it.





	How to Freeze Your Ass off in One Easy Step - A Guide by Clint Barton

Clint’s breaths came out as little puffs of fog in the frigid air. He was perched in a tree in what he thought he was probably the coldest public park in Russia, the metal curve of his bow steadied against his thigh. He had climbed the massive oak a while earlier, eager to take out his assigned target. Of course, Clint had still been warm then, having only just left the heated surveillance van that he’d been briefed in. Now, though he was bundled up as much as he probably could be without looking ridiculous, Clint was freezing his ass off.

The tip of his nose felt numb and he’d made the mistake of wetting his lips. Clint now wasn’t entirely sure that his any of his more significant facial features would survive this ordeal. He was certain that his ears were a lost cause at this point.

“Not to sound like a kid on a road trip or anything,” he said into his earpiece, finally fed up with the frozen silence, “but how much longer is it gonna be?”

“Forty-seven minutes,” responded Coulson, frustratingly calm voice spiked with static.

Clint decided to make his irritation known. It wasn't like there was much else to do, anyway. “With all due respect, sir, are you shitting me?”

“I am not.”

Clint huffed a frustrated breath. Stupid S.H.I.E.L.D. supervisors and their fetish for elaborate, painful, _tedious_ strategies. “Seriously, though? I mean, you’ve got two top-tier assassins at your disposal right now. You realize you could just send Widow in to draw out the guy?”

“Hawkeye,” Natasha said, serene and lethal-sounding as ever. “Shut up.”

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “C’mon, tell me you aren’t freezing.”

“It’s hardly negative twelve celcius,” she responded, voice still infuriatingly calm.

“Point being?”

“Point being, you shouldn’t have joined up with S.H.I.E.L.D. if you can’t handle chilly weather.”

Clint grumbled a half-assed argument about how “ten fahrenheit is a lot more than chilly” and “I didn’t leave my bed for this shit.”

“Agent, please,” Coulson said, sounding a bit irked. “I really don’t want to have to write this down in the mission report. I’ve had to do it enough times in the past already and I don’t like anything about that.”

Clint groaned. His fingers were almost numb, and it probably wouldn’t be much longer until he was shivering so violently that he couldn’t shoot straight. Seriously, who the _fuck_ had thought that a winter assassination would be a good idea?!

“Look,” Clint retorted, his vexation coloring his tone for real, “you either entertain me, or you get me somewhere with a central heating system. What’s it gonna be, Grinch?”

There was silence for a long moment. Then-

“Hawkeye,” Natasha hissed suddenly, tone sharp. Clint thought that she might have been chiding him and so he ignored her, huffing petulantly and adjusting his bow. “ _Hawkeye_!” she said again.

Clint opened his mouth to retort - some variant “I shut up, what more do you want?!” - then closed it with a click of teeth as he saw what she had been alerting him of. The target had left the building early. As Clint squinted, he could see that the mark was scowling, heavy eyebrows drawn together and eyes narrowed.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Clint said out loud, “he doesn’t look like he’s had a good day.”

“He’s been demoted,” Coulson informed him.

Clint’s lips pursed in confusion. “You know this how?” He then remembered Coulson’s agency rep for ruthlessness and, suddenly, wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know. Coulson took the liberty of telling him anyway.

“I’m monitoring their security cams. All of them. I used a voicemail to… insinuate that he was taking advantage of his position to do the same - for his own _pleasure_.” Clint’s lips drew back from his teeth in a sort of grimacing smile. “You did say that you wanted to get this over with early,” Coulson’s staticky voice reminded him. Maybe, _maybe_ Coulson wasn’t as boring as he pretended to be. But the jury was still out on that one.

“Sir?” Natasha said, sounding unperturbed by the revelation of the supervisor's operations. “Which of us do you want to take the shot?”

“You’re closest, Widow.”

Clint almost dropped his bow. “Aren’t you forgetting me? Master marksman?!”

“Backup,” Phil reminded him.

“I’m not _backup_.”

“On this one, you really are,” Natasha said, and Clint could see her clicking the safety off of her sniper rifle from four hundred feet away. He seethed silently. A moment later, the target dropped to the ground just as a generic U-Haul truck was driving past, obscuring him from Clint’s view. When the truck cleared the scene, the target was gone. The agents inside of the vehicle were probably already going through the unconscious man’s pockets for the knives that S.H.I.E.L.D. had warned the assassination team about.

Clint smiled bitterly and thumbed the switch on the riser of his bow to collapse it, dropping stiffly from the tree and not even bothering to try to cushion his fall - the two feet of snow on the ground did enough in that respect. He trudged doggedly toward the surveillance van - his exit point - forced to practically march so that he wasn’t kicking through the snow.

Natasha reached the van before he did and the door swung open for her. She stepped inside. Clint jogged stiffly the rest of the way and, at Coulson’s pointed glance, kicked the snow off of his heavy boots before clambering into the van. Some agent in a sweater shut the door behind him.

The interior of the van was warm, almost stuffy, and an electric lantern hanging from the ceiling spilled orangey-yellow light across the spread of monitoring tech. It looked a good bit like the lovechild of a knockoff sauna and a highschool computer lab.

“God,” Clint moaned, divesting himself of his heavy snow jacket and clumping over to the orange box of ‘shake to activate’ hand-warmers, “I am so ready to sleep.” As he tried to pick up the box, he fumbled, and it went tumbling to the floor of the van, hand-warmer packets spilling out. “Aw,” Clint grumbled under his breath, sinking to the floor with a grunt and reaching out to pick up the packets, “box, no!”

Natasha, cross-legged on the ground, remained impassive and didn’t move to help.

The vehicle shuddered to an abrupt start and pitched Clint to the floor. He picked himself up, scowling and trying to save face. “I didn't deserve that,” he announced to the interior of the van at large.

Natasha’s lips curved into an amused smile - a pleasant, if somewhat surprising deviation from her usual smirk.

Clint was still scowling but, if he had to be honest, he was feeling pretty good for a guy that had been probably an hour away from freezing his nose off.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope you liked the fic! I appreciate all kudos and comments I get, so, if you wanna give me any of those, I'd be grateful as hell!


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